While still in England I posted a blog about taking a guided bicycle tour of London.
And upon my return to GNV a friend asked me a not unexpected question.
Did you feel safe riding a bike in London?
It’s a fair question. And as someone who has cycled in some very large and auto-dominated cities – New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Helsinki, St. Petersburg and Moscow, just to name a few – I felt I could answer with some authority.
First, I was with a group of ten riders and we were being led by an experienced guide who knows how to get around his city with a minimum of risk.
A good rule of thumb for cycling is the more bikes the better. A motorist might easily overlook a single person on a two wheels, but would have to be very distracted indeed to not spot 10 of us together.
But I can tell you the main reason why I did not feel unsafe on two wheels in central London.
Two words: Congestion pricing.
Or as the Brits call it, Congestion charging.
Basically if you want to drive a car in London’s Congestion Charge Zone from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, or from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday through Sunday, it’s going to cost you15 pounds
Which is why you can stroll through the heart of London’t financial district and see cyclists, buses, the occasional delivery van…but hardly any cars at all.
It was no coincidence, I’m sure, that the route of our bicycle tour more or less coincided with the map of London’t Congestion Charge Zone.
London is a world leader in the use of congestion pricing to minimize urban traffic. As a result is has been able to invest 1.2 billion pounds in charge revenues in tube and surface transit improvements as well as engineering more people friendly (complete) streets.
Remember what I said about the more bikes present the safer cycling is? Consider this report from Bloomberg News:
London’s recent cycling growth is rapid: An estimated 1.26 million biking trips are now made every day in the capital — a 6.2% increase on 2022 and up 20% since 2019 — and unlike the rest of England, the pandemic-fueled boom has kept on growing. Cycling trips are now the equivalent to a third of all Tube journeys and a quarter of bus passenger riders, making bikes a major player on the city’s transportation stage.
Or this report about the cycling boom to come out of London’s pandemic lockdown.
As a result of limited travel and less cars being on the road, 1.3 million Brits purchased a bike during the first lockdown and began building up their confidence on London’s streets. The government also released a £250 million emergency fund for pop-up bike lanes with protected space for cycling, wider pavements, safer junctions and cycle and bus-only corridors. Councils joined by blocking off streets to all traffic to encourage social distancing in major town areas and secondary roads that were identified as “rat runs” were adapted using large planters and bollards with the aim of making them residential use only.
So yeah, London is a city of walkers
And a city of cyclists.
And none of that happened by accident, but rather by design.
So did I feel safe cycling in London? Hell yes!
But, please, don’t ask me if I felt safe cycling in Moscow. That was downright suicidal.
P.S. The Governor of New York just shut down New York City’s congestion pricing plan. Primarily over fear that some Democrat politicians might lose their seats because suburban commuters don’t want to pay extra to create traffic chaos in the Big Apple.
What a shame. By one analysis, London’s move to congestion charging “led directly to the shift of commuters away from cars. In 2000, around half of journeys were made by private car. Today, the figure is close to one-third. Perhaps most importantly, around a third of trips are now made on foot, a likely effect of quieter and more pedestrian-friendly roads. “
But this is autoAmerica, where the politics of auto-anarchy are always going to prevail over all other considerations.
FreeGNV 